Valerie Rosen, Ph.D. 255 S. 17th Street, Suite1605 Philadelphia, PA 19102 Tel: 267-634-1719
Informed Consent for Treatment
Welcome to my practice. This document contains important information about my professional services and policies. When you sign this document, it will represent an agreement between us.
I am a licensed psychologist in the State of Pennsylvania (License Number: PS017255I earned my doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Boston University in 2012. I specialize in individual, group, and couples therapy for adults, and psychological testing and assessment of adults. I completed my pre-doctoral internship and post-doctoral fellowship at Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of Pennsylvania, and I am currently acandidate at the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia. If you have any questions about my clinical or academic training or qualifications, please do not hesitate to ask me.
The primary approaches to therapy that I use are psychodynamic therapy and cognitive- behavioral therapy. Psychodynamic therapy focuses on exploration of feelings, wishes, fears, and beliefs about yourself and other people that you may not be consciously aware of before starting therapy. These unconscious processes develop early in childhood through your interactions with important people in your life, and may conflict with each other or with family, cultural, or societal values, leading to unhappiness or unhealthy behaviors. Cognitive-behavioral therapy focuses on the thoughts (including beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, attributions, interpretations, etc and behaviors (including sleep habits, eating habits, substance use, procrastination, communication style, etc that may contribute to your emotional difficulties or symptoms. In addition to these therapy approaches, I pay careful attention to cultural context. Social identities such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, and ability status (to name just a few) affect how each of us experiences the world and how we understand ourselves. We all have multiple social identities that grant us greater or lesser power and privilege in various contexts. I try to understand your life history and your current experiences in the context of your multiple social identities, and to be aware of the values and biases that I bring to my work from my own social identities.